St. Patrick's Day and Easter

Every year I host a St. Patrick's Day party, actually, I host two; one for my friends on Friday or Saturday night and then one for my family on Sunday.  This year I started the party at 5:00 since so many of my friends have children.  The kids were all gone at 9 and I thought it must have been 11, turns out it was only 9.  Clearly, I'm getting old.  The adults without children stayed 'til nearly midnight and it was a good time.  Per usual I made too much food.  I was going to post pics of it when I realized I didn't take a single picture!  Nor did I take any pictures the next day at my family party, so you'll just have to take my word when I say we had lots of festive stuff--green veggies, fruit arranged like a a rainbow, St. Pat's trifle, potato skins, green cupcakes, shamrock cookies for the kids to decorate, green punch, and potato soup.


I did a little better with the Easter picture taking.  In fact, I'm writing this blog on Easter, but it won't post for a few days since I also need to finish blogging about my cruise!  Easter morning, we got up at  8 and somehow got ready and made it to church by 8:50 and actually got seats (church was at 9), then home to cook/prep and get ready for everyone coming for brunch at noon. By some miracle, it was gorgeous outside today.  Some years we've had to hide eggs for the nephews in the snow, but not this year.   I made deviled eggs, monkey bread, fruit salad, salad, pancakes, rolls (well, I bought the rolls, just had to bake them) and scrambled eggs.  Other people brought:  mashed potatoes and coffee cake.  Every year my mom makes a bunny cake, but she mixed it up this year  and made a sheep cake (it was a little smaller than the bunny cake so I guess that's good, less leftover.  It was good, even though the bunny was a tradition for so long.)  I also made an Easter trifle.    Hope you had a nice Easter!

Random Stuff from Last Summer

Not too long after I went to that football game, I posted about, I went to Maine for a wedding.   Actually, it was the day after the game so please enjoy some pictures from that.

Aroud that time there was a visit to Portsmouth, NH too so enjoy some pics from that as well.

Hey look at that, shortly before this summer, I'm finally caught up on last summer ha ha

1st Football Game

I'm not a football fan, but I somehow let my husband talk me into going to a Patriots pre-season football game.  The idea of sitting outside in January watching a sport I do not enjoy does not appeal to me, but sitting outside in the summer when it's warm watching a game, that I can deal with.  So I did.  I still don't fully understand football, but we had a good time.  And now I can say I've been to a Patriots game.  (And yes, I am really writing about something that happened months ago NOW because I'm so behind in blog land.)

1st Anniversary and 2nd Anniversary

I was skimming through some old blog posts and I found this one.  Apparently, I saved it, but never posted it.  Oops.  Better late than never...

Since I was such a slacker with blogging last year, I never blogged about my 1st anniversary--and I took pictures and everything so today you get two posts in one.  I will tell you about my fist anniversary and my second anniversary.

Our first anniversary was on a Saturday--nice timing!  Early in the afternoon I made grilled cheese sandwiches--not very romantic I know, but we both like them.  We then ate our wedding cake--it was really good, I was a bit nervous about eating cake that had been frozen for a whole year, but it was still tasty--and we drank some delicious wine in our wedding toasting glasses.  We also watched our wedding video.  Then it was time to head out of town.  I am a big Bryan Adams fan and he was playing at a casino not too far from us.  My husband doesn't love Bryan Adams, but he does enjoy going to a casino a couple of times a year so he got me tickets for a present and I agreed to spend some time in the casino.  So we drove down, checked into our hotel, and then headed to the casino.  We walked around, gambled a little.  Then Mike went to play some game while I poked around the shops.  We went to a seafood restaurant for dinner and shortly after that it was time to go see Bryan Adams.  He put on a great show.  I enjoyed it.  Even my husband said it was a good show and like I said he's not really a Bryan Adams fan.  A little tiny bit of gambling, a snack stop, and then we caught the shuttle back to our hotel.  It was a pretty good first anniversary.  Below are pics from before we left for the hotel, at the hotel, and at the concert.

Wine from our honeymoon that we saved for this event.  

Some people just dont' cooperate when you try to take their picture.  :-p

Our hotel room

Attempting a selfie at the hotel

Our second anniversary was sadly much more low key because 1.  it was on a Monday and 2.  it was the day after I got home from Ireland.  We went out to dinner to a local fancy restaurant we'd never been to before.  Mike offered to make reservations, but I figured it wouldn't be busy on a Monday night so not to bother.  Wrong!  It was a half hour wait so we just got a drink while we waited.  Then we had dinner.  It was expensive, but delicious.  And then it was time to go home because Mike had to get up early for work the next day.  (As it turned out so did I, but I didn't know that at the time, they called me that moring to see if I could come in and fill in for someone.)  The pics didn't come out so good.  I saw on pinterest a thing where on your first anniversary you take a picture of you and your spouse holding your wedding picture, then on your second anniversary you take a picture of you holding your 1st anniversary picture, etc.  We'll see how it turns out, but in theory you can look back on decades of anniversary pics in one picture.

 Watching our wedding DVD

Day 8 Home Again Cold Again

On day 6 of the cruise, I did spend some time outside, but on day 7, I stayed inside all day so when we got back to NYC and stepped off the boat around 9am it was a bit like getting smacked in the face since it was so cold!  A short (pricey) car ride to the bus stop where we went to a diner for brunch then it was time to board the bus and go home.  The bus made good time.  I was surprised at how early we got home (well back to K and B's place and then we drove home from there).  Just in time to order a pizza (hey one last night of not cooking) and do laundry before it was back to reality the next day.  It was a fun trip, but as they often do, it went by too quickly.

Days 6 & 7

It is taking me way too long to blog about this trip so I'm going to combine days 6 & 7 and try to finish this up soon.  Both days were "at sea" days.  They were relaxing and enjoyable.  Some highlights included:  reading outside on the deck, good food, good dessert/snacks, cute towel animals, sleeping in, watching karaoke, watching a comedy show, mango meltodwns--my favorite drink on the cruise, and a wine tasting--I'm not a huge wine fan, but I did learn that chocolate makes wine better.  I may have enjoyed some of the chocolate more than the wine ha ha.  I took very few pictures the last two days and none worth posting so there you go, a nice short post.

Day 5 Nassau

Day 5 we were in Nassau.  We had a tour of the island scheduled.  Some of the people on our tour were really loud and a bit annoying and our guide was not one of the best tour guides I've ever had, but I did enjoy getting to see Nassau.  We saw a lot of the big stops and enjoyed free:  rum cake, a shot of rum, and chocolate.  We spent a short while walking around The Atlantis Resort (cha ching cha ching, holy expensive looking) and we climbed the Queen's Staircase.  We also drove by some historical spots and the beach.  We enjoyed our tour of the rum distillery as well as our free samples of rum cake and chocolate.  When the tour finished, it was a little after noon and we were close to the cruise ship so we went back on the ship to drop off the few things we had purchased as well as our beach clothes since we decided to skip the beach (it was so crowded) and poke around the shops instead.  Once back off the ship we went to Senor Frogs for lunch then peeked at some of the shops. Then it was back to the ship.  We met up with K and B later and had dinner and drinks with them that evening.  That was our last stop.  Two more days at sea and then we'd be back home.  Ahh,  it was going so fast!